By Paul McLeary on March 16, 2021 at 2:35 PM An unmanned ship, part of the Strategic Capabilities Office’s Ghost Fleet Overlord program WASHINGTON: A new Navy document offers a broad outline for developing and fielding new generations of unmanned platforms, while refusing tie the service to any one capability, platform, timeline, or budget. Next month, the Navy will also kick off a major exercise of the California coast to begin working through how to operate unmanned vessels and crewed ships together, putting a Zumwalt destroyer in the water to act as a testbed for the effort. Overall, the unclassified version of the Unmanned Campaign Framework underscores the need to work with the defense industry, academia, and other services to build new systems that can operate autonomously and across the joint force, but “unmanned systems in themselves aren’t a goal,” Vice Adm. Jim Kilby, head of the Navy’s Warfighting Requirements and Capabilities office, told reporters in a Tuesday conference call.